We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community for their family's weirdest, most unique Christmas traditions. Here are some of the funniest and strangest responses.
1. The Chase
"The young children get chased around by the crazy uncle who has a pig's tongue in his hand. Happens every year. Never fails."
— penmen
2. Merry Shit Crams
"We have a set of wooden alphabet blocks, handmade by my grandparents, that spell out MERRY CHRISTMAS. My siblings and I have a tradition of rearranging them to say … different things. My personal favorites are 'RECTYM RIMS RASH' (OK, we cheated with the spelling) and SHART, SIMMER, CRY' (commas implied, not actually included). 'MERRY SHIT CRAMS' is also a classic family favorite.
The goal is always to use all of the letters and not misspell anything, but there's only so much you can do with too many R's and not enough vowels."
3. Accepting the Burp
"My three brothers and I (aged 34, 33, 31, and 28) have been 'accepting the burp' every Christmas for YEARS. Basically, it's the one day of the year that you can burp, blow it in your sibling's face, and they have to waft it toward themselves as a sign of good will and acceptance. We just can't let it go!"
4. NKOTB All Day
"We start listening to the New Kids on the Block Christmas CD right after Thanksgiving. It's the only Christmas music we play. All. Month. Long."
5. A Pretty Good Deal
"Every Christmas Eve eve, my grandma would let us open one gift early if we rubbed her feet for one full minute. She got to pick which gift, but it was worth it … sorta."
6. Mele Kalikimaka
"When my mom and aunt were around 11 years old they made up a dance to the song 'Mele Kalikimaka' by Bing Crosby and performed it at Christmas dinner. It's been almost 40 years and all the women and little girls in the family still 'perform' the dance after dinner in front of everyone. It's mortifying and yet my favorite tradition."
7. Saint Liza
"We have a picture of Liza Minnelli that we put on top of our tree as the star."
8. Gingerbread Destruction
"My family gets together and decorates gingerbread houses at the beginning of December ... and then brings the houses back for our end-of-December get-together, to rig them up with homemade explosives and blow them up."
9. Christmas Punch
"We make something called 'Christmas punch,' the recipe for which has been in the family for generations. It's a spiced citrus concoction we ONLY drink on Christmas and Thanksgiving. You are not allowed to give the recipe to anyone outside the family, on pains of being disinherited. It's such a huge part of my childhood that I wanted to serve it at my wedding, but my mother refused to give the caterers the recipe. I was furious, but now I am the keeper of the recipe and I guard it with my life."
10. Don't Ask Questions
"Every Christmas my grandma makes everyone roll a die, and if you roll an odd number you have to jump off a bridge into a lake. Nobody knows where this tradition came from and we don't ask questions."
— sarabug
11. The Barbie Head
"One Christmas I got a Barbie. Our dog Dixie decided to get her out of the box and eat all of her except for her head. So, every year, we hang up that Barbie head with green, red, and white yarn tied to her ponytail. She's kept watch of our Christmas tree for 23 years."
12. The Trolley Chase
"Where my cousins live, there are Christmas trolleys that go around at night and give tours of all the houses that have fancy decorations. It's a big deal, and tickets sell out really quickly. One year, my cousins decided to chase a trolley. We followed it around for hours, and the trolleys ended up trying to lose us and going off course to get rid of us. It's become a tradition, and everyone in town knows about the minivan that chases the trolleys every year."
13. The Christmas Pigs
"My parents invented something when we were little called 'Christmas pigs.' They are a trio of stuffed-animal pigs dressed in hand-knitted Christmas sweaters that magically arrive during the night sometime after Thanksgiving. There would always be a 'sighting' of the Christmas pigs in the area before they arrived for good, though we could never capture them at the first sighting! We would spot them outside in the backyard, but they would suspiciously disappear while we were putting coats and shoes on... or they'd be hanging outside the first floor window that didn't open (little did we know it was our dad hanging them out the second-floor window with a fishing pole). I believed in the magic of the Christmas pigs YEARS longer than Santa Claus. Now they just mail my pig to me at school, but it's still super exciting and wonderful."
14. Bathing in Money
"My family gets dressed in our bathing suits, fill up our bathtub with coins, and take turns sitting in it. It's supposed to mean that we'll be 'bathing in money' all year."
15. Don't Try This at Home
"My great-grandfather invented a 'shocking machine,' which is exactly what it sounds like. Every year at the Christmas Eve party, we form a human chain with the machine and send an electric current through ourselves. The brave souls of the family take on the machine alone (fewer people means a less diluted electric current). Fortunately, no one has died yet."
— Ellen Brayer, Facebook
16. Not One of Her Better Efforts
"We always have to end the meal by saying, 'This is not one of her better efforts.' My grandmother said this to her daughter, my mother, one Christmas many years ago. Now that she's passed, we say it for her, even though the food is usually excellent."